In a wireless communication system, a terminal is in a connected state in which radio resources have been assigned to the terminal when sending and receiving data, and switches to an idle state in which the radio resources have been released after completing the transmission and reception of the data. The terminal in the idle state performs signaling for being assigned radio resources in order to send and receive data again.
If a variety of kinds of terminal applications are frequently used at the same time these days, a terminal frequently generates small data, such as keep-alive and state transition. In such a case, the terminal frequently performs signaling for the assignment and release of radio resources and core network resources in order to send and receive data, which generates a signaling load on a network.
Furthermore, if a terminal frequently sends and receives small data, the terminal frequently repeats the connected state and the idle state. This makes a network repeatedly perform S1 connection and data radio bearer establishment, that is, network resources between a base station and an MME, thus experiencing a load.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method of efficiently processing a repetitive and small amount of data.
Meanwhile, various types of data applications could have become executed in a terminal at the same time due to the introduction of a smart phone. For example, a chatting program, a web browser, and streaming players may send and receive data at the same time. In particular, many applications that periodically access a network and exchange small data have occurred, and an example thereof includes a chatting program or a push service program. A variety of kinds of such applications may have different data occurrence cycles. For example, in general, a chatting program or push service exchanges data once every 5 seconds, whereas there may be a situation in which a web browser sends data once every several minutes to several hours.
Today, in the case where a terminal has set up RRC connection with a base station, if the activity of a user, that is, data activity, is not present for a specific time, the base station releases the RRC connection in order to prevent the waste of resources. That is, the base station releases the RRC connection if the activity of the terminal is not present until a timer value expires using an inactivity timer. Today, the value of the inactivity timer may be voluntarily set by the base station. Accordingly, since information about a user, that is, information about an application operating on a terminal, is not considered, precise conditions for the terminal is not considered, which may result in the repetition of the frequent setup and release of RRC connection.